India -- Politics and government -- 1919-1947; Nationalism -- India
EDITOR: Indeed, our gods even are made in Germany. What need, then, to
speak of matches, pins, and glassware? My answer can be only one. What
did India do before these articles were introduced? Precisely the same
should be done to-day. As long as we cannot make pins without machinery,
so long will we do without them. The tinsel splendour of glassware we
will have nothing to do with and we will make wicks, as of old, with
home-grown cotton, and use hand-made earthern saucers for lamps. So
doing, we shall save our eyes and money, and will support Swadeshi, and
so shall we attain Home Rule.
It is not to be conceived that all men will do all these things at one
time, or that some men will give up all machine-made things at once.
But, if the thought is sound, we will always find out what we can give
up, and will gradually cease to use this. What a few may do, others will
copy, and the movement will grow like the cocoanut of the mathematical
problem. What the leaders do, the populace will gladly follow. The
matter is neither complicated nor difficult. You and I shall not wait
until we can carry others with us. Those will be the losers who will not
do it, and those who will not do it, although they can appreciate the
truth, will deserve to be called cowards.
READER: What, then, of the tram-cars and electricity?
EDITOR: This question is now too late. It signifies nothing. If we are
to do without the railways, we shall have to do without the tram-cars.
Machinery is like a snake-hole which may contain from one to a hundred
snakes. Where there is machinery there are large cities; and where there
are large cities, there are tram-cars and railways; and there only does
one see electric light. English villages do not boast any of these
things. Honest physicians will tell you that, where means of artificial
locomotion have increased, the health of the people has suffered. I
remember that, when in a European town there was a scarcity of money,
the receipts of the tramway company, of the lawyers and of the doctors,
went down, and the people were less unhealthy. I cannot recall a single
good point in connection with machinery. Books can be written to
demonstrate its evils.
READER: It is a good point or a bad one that all you are saying will be
printed through machinery?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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